Why Goodluck Jonathan is likely to win the 2015 presidential election by a landslide

Why Goodluck Jonathan is likely to win the 2015 presidential election by a landslide

By Femi Aribisala
Goodluck Jonathan is currently the only presidential candidate in Nigeria. The others are nowhere to be found.
I have been a student of elections for 42 years. I obtained my first
degree in History and Politics from Warwick University, Coventry,
England in 1975. In my second year at Warwick, I obtained a scholarship
to visit the United States to study the circumstances behind the 1973
election of Maynard Jackson as the first African-American Mayor of
Atlanta, and of a major Southern metropolis in the United States since
the American Civil War.
Since then, I have been fascinated by elections. Unfortunately,
Nigeria remained under military rule for an inordinate length of time.
The most fascinating election I have ever observed was the first
election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president of the
United States in 2008. Obama secured the nomination of the Democratic
Party against the formidable Hilary Clinton; and he then went on to
defeat the Republican nominee, John McCain, in the general election.
Anticlimax
Obama’s 2007/2008 election campaign has since become a textbook-case
of outstanding political strategizing in the United States. His superior
tactics ensured that his victory quickly became inevitable, even
against all the odds. Therefore, some of us were able to call his
nomination as Democratic Party candidate and election as president very
early; to the discomfiture of doubting Thomases who could not imagine a
black U.S. president in their lifetime.

The forthcoming 2015 presidential election in Nigeria is another
election that has become easy to predict, but for different reasons.
Yes, it is a much ballyhooed election, especially since the emergence of
the All Progressives Congress. However, the APC has turned out to be a
newspaper political party and nothing more. Its novelty has long died
down and a new harsh and dismal political reality now confronts it.
As a result, the 2015 election is not likely to live up to its hype.
As a matter of fact, all the evidence now indicates the election will be
a cakewalk for the PDP. Goodluck Jonathan will not only be re-elected
as president, he will be re-elected by a landslide.
PDP failure
Ordinarily, the forthcoming election should be a problematic one for
Goodluck Jonathan. After 15 years, Nigerians are generally fed up with
the PDP. 15 years is more than enough time to change drastically the
electrical power situation in the country. But this has yet to happen to
any appreciable degree.
One year is more than sufficient to make a big impact on the problem
of corruption in Nigeria. Again, this has not happened in 15 years. The
security situation in the country is now critical and is likely to get
much worse before it gets better. 219 kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls are
still missing, with only dubious promissory notes offered by the
president for their imminent rescue.
For these and other reasons, the 2015 presidential elections should
be a difficult one for Goodluck Jonathan. When the Iranians held
American diplomats hostage under the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in
1979, it led to the defeat of incumbent President Jimmy Carter in the
United States presidential elections of 1980.

However, in the case of Nigeria, my contention is that the
re-election of Jonathan in 2015 is going to be easy. Jonathan will
defeat his APC challenger convincingly. He is also likely to obtain the
requisite one third of the votes in virtually every state of the
federation.

Shambolic opposition

The main reason for this conclusion is that Jonathan is facing a
shambolic APC opposition that does not seem to have a clue about what it
takes to run an effective national presidential campaign. This explains
why, till date, Jonathan is still the only candidate running for the
presidency. Although he has yet to declare his candidacy officially,
even a three year-old Nigerian child knows he will be the PDP candidate.

However, his APC challenger remains unknown. It is incredible that
barely six months to an election where the opposition hopes to unseat a
president who has been in office for nearly six years, the APC bigwigs
have yet to agree on who will be his challenger. Moreover, the INEC
timetable favours the PDP as opposed to the APC. By decreeing that the
party primaries for the presidential elections must wait until October
2014, and the campaigns must not start until November, INEC has created a
situation where Jonathan has become virtually the only candidate. Just
by being president, he is already campaigning and running for
re-election.

This means there is now insufficient time to socialize Nigerians
about the APC candidate. The only opposition candidates that need no
national introduction are Buhari, Atiku and Tinubu. But the candidacies
of these men are dead in the water. Buhari and Atiku have contested the
presidency in the past and failed woefully. Should they try again, they
will fail again.

Tinubu’s candidacy is a nonstarter, given Obasanjo’s recent
eight-year representation of the South-West in Aso Rock. This leaves the
APC with no candidates of note to field against Jonathan. The only
realistic APC candidate at this eleventh hour can only be a national
nonentity; and among the non-entities, I include men like Rabiu
Kwankwaso of Kano. An APC nonentity cannot prevail against Jonathan and
the PDP juggernaut.

Shallow party-structure

The only party that can field a nonentity and still win the
presidential election in Nigeria is the PDP. This is because it is the
only longstanding national party in Nigeria and, unlike the APC; it has
been in power for 15 years. That means the PDP has firm roots
nationwide. But the APC only has roots in the South-West, and even
there, this is beginning to unravel; as the recent elections in Ondo and
Ekiti indicate.

Buhari is very popular in the North, but he is hopeless at building
party-structures. Virtually every party Buhari built imploded. Buhari is
a one-man party. This is not very useful in an election where Buhari
himself is not a viable APC presidential candidate. The APC has excited
itself as a result of the defection of some five PDP governors to its
ranks. But this is also not very useful because these governors could
not defect with their PDP party-structures.

The defector PDP governors have brought a great deal of publicity to
the APC. But whatever assets they had to offer has long fizzled out. A
testament to this is the ease with which Murtala Nyako was impeached as
governor of Adamawa State. With all the noise Nyako was making, it was
easy to forget that he had no roots on the ground. It was all smoke and
mirrors that did not go beyond newspaper headlines.

No game-plan

Where then is the APC taking the fight to the formidable PDP?
Literally nowhere at the moment! The APC peaked too early. As a matter
of fact, it is the party now in retreat virtually everywhere. It lost to
the PDP in Ondo and Ekiti, part of its South-West stronghold. Nyako of
Adamawa has been impeached. Al-Makura of Nasarawa is on the ropes. Other
APC governors are under threat of impeachment, but no such threat hangs
over the head of any PDP governor.

The defection of the PDP governors to the APC has turned out to be a
blessing in initial disguise. From the point of view of political
strategy, it would have been better if they had remained in the PDP as
APC wolves in PDP clothing. This might have been useful in undermining
Jonathan’s candidacy. Indeed, they could have challenged him for the PDP
ticket, not with any hope of winning, but just in order to dent his
strength and create some havoc within the PDP.

However, by defecting, the rebel PDP governors ushered in peace to
the PDP. Simultaneously, they exported their wahala to the APC where
they are now at loggerheads with the old APC brigade in bitter internal
struggles for supremacy. For a party that has yet to find its feet, this
has been disastrous. Indeed, the defections are now going in the other
direction, from APC to PDP; as happened recently in Zamfara. Even the
defector PDP governors are likely to lose their seats in the
near-future, because defection is proscribed in the Constitution and the
PDP has taken the matter to court.

So what exactly is the APC game-plan? Nothing much! All we have at
the moment is Lai Mohammed coming up incessantly with bombastic
broadsides against Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP in the newspapers. If
they really believe this is the way to unseat a six-year-old president
and dislodge a fifteen-year-old government, then the APC bigwigs need to
enroll in NIPSS, Kuru for courses in “Nigerian Elections 101.”

Boko Haram factor

And then there is the Boko Haram insurgency and the albatross of the
kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls. The strategy of the terrorists is that
every explosion is supposed to discredit the Jonathan administration. In
spite of its hatred for the entire Nigerian political establishment,
there is no doubt that the Boko Haram would prefer a Northern Muslim
president to Southern Christian Goodluck Jonathan.

For this very reason, a vote for APC is now more likely to be
construed as a vote of surrender to the insurgency. While Nigerians are
very concerned about the security situation in the country, they are
even less likely to succumb to its incorrigible purpose. The
indiscriminate bombing of innocent Nigerians for the sake of an agenda
that is alien to Nigeria cannot but rally people nationwide behind
President Goodluck Jonathan.

A few days ago, Vanguard published a Special Report captioned: “Six
Months to Elections, Where Are the Presidential Aspirants?” The answer
is that Goodluck Jonathan is currently the only presidential candidate
in Nigeria. The others are nowhere to be found.

The APC is a useful counterpoise to the PDP in the Nigerian political
equation. But it is only likely to pose a strong challenge to the
ruling party in 2019, when there will be no incumbent president to
contend with, and after it might have sorted out its internal
contradictions and developed firm roots nationwide. But as it is today,
the APC is not even likely to survive impending defeat in 2015.

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About Me

Ambassador T. Brikins is a Writer Blogger, Mass Communications Consultant and Inforpreneur having experiences in the National News Media, Oil and Gas, Administration, University and the Church of Christ..
He is C.E.O. @ New Direction Communications..
He is an ordained Minister and heavily imparted by Dr. David Oyedepo, Pastor E.A.Adeboye, Rev.Roselyn Oduyemi, Kenneth Copeland,Dr. D.Yongi Cho, Apostle Alex Bamgbola, Kenneth E. Hagin, Apostle G. Oduyemi, Archbishop Benson Idahosa, T.L. Osborn,Dr. E.W. Kenyon , Oral Roberts and many more.
Ambassador T. Brikins runs with the visions of Isaiah 11:9; Matthew 23:23 and 11 Corinthians 5:16-21 working with the Lord for their practical expressions in every area of life. .
He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
Twitter:@Brikins_tuoyo
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